Illnesses

[pilgrimofmanynames]

"Good point," the woman said after a quick, thoughtful gesture Celobra didn't follow. "I suppose it depends on why they irritate me. If they irritate me because they're pompous, well, that's not harmful. If they irritate me because they're prejudiced, that is harmful. The minor irritations I do my best to ignore, or I'd be all white-haired by now and only half as gorgeous." Celobra laughed dryly, matching the mood of her companion's smirk. The laughter was as much from surprise as from humor. She tended to forget that most people simply didn't have the time to teach every annoying noble's son a lesson in respect. "I suppose that's so," she said with cheer that was mostly sincere, "but I've a long ways to go before I have so many obligations as you." She tilted her head a hair's breadth and gave the woman a smirk of her own - a highly pert and cheeky smirk. She noted that her clever friend was again fiddling with her spoon. Well, that was all right - she seemed to be an energetic person, and Celobra would hardly fault her for that. Thoughtfully, and with what couldn't be anything but a remainder of the previous sentence's amusement, the woman added, "Irk. Such a fun word. Sounds like a broken wagon wheel." Celobra didn't smile at that one, but her eyes crinkled with the hint of one. "I'd say more like a knowing smile, and something going perfectly wrong." That would definitely scare up a smile - not that they'd been so hard to find tonight. She'd smiled more over this dinner than she'd smiled in the last month. And she definitely smiled at her companion's next words. "Oh so true," the woman said with an enthusiastic eye roll. "And the ragamuffins get so creative about it, too. More than one snotty noble has found his pockets full of mud. Or rotten meat, depending on their offense." "Ragamuffins" could have been harsh, but she could tell from the way it was said - with amusement, and maybe respect - that it wasn't. She shared another short laugh with the woman - oh, she had to call her something other than that, what would it be? The Watcher? "Cleverclogs" wouldn't be too far amiss, perhaps. The woman seemed to tell so much, but nothing terribly important. But of course - she knew people who used the sort of information Celobra would find relevant, was one of them herself. She knew exactly the games Celobra liked to play, and knew them well. Celobra squinted one eye and finally put her own little name to the woman. Noble. It could be what she was, too - the knowledge of watching games was very suggestive, as almost all nobles were practically raised to them - but for now, it would just be a nickname. She laughed when Noble did, because she'd seen such payback before. Live rats were more common in most places she'd been, though. "So how do you get back at your irritators? You look like the kind who uses a more subtle approach than sneaking burrs into one's hood." "Get back at" was a bit off - the people she meddled with rarely did anything to her, mainly by virtue of the fact that not many people knew she existed. Little bonus from living in the sewers. But the question was her favorite out of all those she'd been asked that evening. "Nothing so plain as that, no. Given, it's inventive, but meat and mud, disgusting as they may be, don't offer much of a lesson. No, let the punishment fit the crime, so my dad always told me. I live by that, though what I don't bother with is his advice not to meddle." She didn't just smile this time, but grinned, almost loudly. It was one she hardly ever showed people, because it made them so nervous. It also practically screamed that she was up to mischief. Well, she had just admitted to meddling. Several times, in fact. And she knew that Noble definitely wouldn't be worried.

[Lisenet]

The girl's dispassion seemed to be easing into a lighter mellow attitude and Tellen tried not to let her satisfaction show. If she could spend her day making one person a little bit happier, if she had accomplished nothing else she had still been successful. And the younger the person, the sadder it was that they were sad. Tellen would have appreciated having someone around to press gently against the suffocation surrounding her the last time she had been truly sorrowed. A brief melancholy or loneliness now and then was nothing to pop a shrug at--Tellen's frequent moves and infrequent trusts made them a natural occurrence--but watching her closest friend's body drowning him as he lay in her lap had been sharp enough that she spent weeks wrapping herself in as many layers of smothering apathy as possible, just to feel relief. Later she had discovered that feeling the pain instead of hiding from it kept it from growing infected inside, but that was a lesson she'd had to learn. She knew better now.

"Nothing so plain as that," the girl responded, a shadow amused.

Tellen gaped theatrically. "Plain? Clearly I will have to try harder."

"..What I don't bother with is his advice not to meddle."

Tellen propped her chin on the heel of her hand with a smile. "Mine tried that once or twice with me and realized I was a lost cause. Never took up the family trade, unmarried, no suitors, no prospects, and living penny to penny by the week." She laughed, leaning back, and beckoned the maid with a board of bread over for something with which to sop up the second half of her heavy beet stew. "I'm afraid I don't have the time to teach every mentally bereft person the fault of their ways. I'm just petty enough to want to get them back for whatever I think they did to me." Which, often enough, was just to commit an unfortunate act in Tellen's line of sight. Poor ignorant ladies and fellows, but eventually, maybe they would learn that every time they smacked their handmaid something unfortunate found its way into their fancy clothes. And the nobles committed the most arrogant of the misdemeanors; the poor tended more toward desperation.

Tearing a corner off her chunk of bread and pushing it into the middle of the table so the girl could have some too if she wished, Tellen's gaze swung levelly from patron to patron inside the tavern. A middle-aged woman and her uncomfortable-looking footman were sitting upright at the bar, and her gaze lingered on them. Surreptitiously turning a finger in their direction, Tellen mused, "What do you think a fancy lady like that is doing in a place like this?" Probably perusing for a more exciting lover than her smoothly carved husband. A shocking number of them did, though there were more graceful ways to go about the search than to stick out like a pearl in a coal bucket.

[pilgrimofmanynames]

A shadow of melancholy appeared to flicker through Noble's eyes for a brief moment, as well as a spark of sympathy. It could have been the light shifting as patrons passed in front of it, but Celobra was reasonably sure it wasn't an illusion. It was also none of her business, although interesting to note.

At any rate, the woman evidently regained her cheer in less than a second, as she was shortly mock gasping at Celobra's dismissal of her methods. Celobra outright grinned when Noble announced, in downcast tones fit for a comedic play, "Plain? Clearly I will have to try harder." Celobra assumed a haughty look - a caricature of what she tended to make herself like to strangers - then relaxed again and replied, "Oh, I'm hardly the supreme arbiter of mischief. You conduct your nefarious deeds as you like."

Noble rested her chin on her hand - what would have seemed a brooding, pensive look if not for her smile. "Mine tried that once or twice with me and realized I was a lost cause. Never took up the family trade, unmarried, no suitors, no prospects, and living penny to penny by the week." Ah, fathers, valiantly standing between their mischievous daughters and the world. Celobra looked up and back through her memories as she recalled some of the choicest instances of her father's protective advice. "Don't go into the mountains," he'd say, when everyone around was already scared of them enough that they'd flee Alagaesia rather than go in.

Noble's remark was punctuated by an easy laugh and a silent request for bread from a passing maid - the one with the secret criminal identity, Celobra noted. The thief-in-hiding would certainly have heard their talk, although Celobra wasn't much worried. Half the criminal underworld of Teirm knew about her interference already.

Noble continued. "I'm afraid I don't have the time to teach every mentally bereft person the fault of their ways. I'm just petty enough to want to get them back for whatever I think they did to me." Celobra mulled that over for a second before answering "I'd call that caring, not pettiness, but that's only my humble opinion." Noting the bread Noble set between them, Celobra plucked it from the rough wood with thin fingers and began picking off small bites and chewing them, with little enthusiasm. She wasn't especially hungry, and the bread here wasn't bad, but neither was it especially fine fare. She was talking now, principally, although she did rather feel obliged to accept the bread.

Her eyes, therefore, stayed on Noble, and her eyes and finger, which both pointed to a definitely noble patron and a footman Celobra felt sure had been dragged along by the lady next to him. "What do you think a fancy lady like that is doing in a place like this?" Noble asked, mirroring Celobra's whirling thoughts. She had seen neither lady nor footman before in any part of the city, indicating that they didn't live in the areas she frequented. She couldn't see any reason for the footman to be there except as a witness or chaperone, but if the lady was there to acquire or meet a man, she wouldn't want somebody watching. "I don't know," Celobra was forced to conclude. "It's the footman that puzzles me -why make him come with her?" Tonight was improving steadily. A puzzle to work with - well, it was more than she had hoped for. She did always seem to run into trouble. Or maybe it was more that she had trained herself to look for it.

[Lisenet]

A smile, finally. A touch on the terrifying side, for some reason, but a smile nonetheless. And that was good enough for Tellen. ”Oh, nefarious, you make me sound so heartless. It is my expansive heart that makes me so determined to right the nobility’s wrongs, I assure you.” She swirled her wine to keep the dregs from settling and took another sip, a grin tucked into her cheek.

”I’d call that caring, not pettiness….”

Tellen shook her head, returning the glass to the table. ”I see a difference, though. Pettiness is me wanting revenge for something done only to me—wanting to get a man back for sneering at me, for instance. Caring would be if I was hurt because of it rather than merely offended. Does that make any sense? It’s not a very good explanation.” Tellen frowned. Usually she was very good with her explanations. She could weave such fanciful fictions and such believable, tactile tales that she could convince a priest he had lived his entire life a sinner, and without ever allowing him to believe his belief system was wrong. She scowled down into the dusty light filtering through her glass, wondering if its taste had been off and through the aftertaste of the pungent beet stew she simply hadn’t noticed. She set both the glass and the bowl aside.

”My guess,” she continued, back on the topic of the perplexing noblewoman and her manservant, ”is that she’s meeting someone she already knows and is comfortable with, but the man made her come here to meet him just to see if she genuinely wanted to entangle her ‘interests’ with his. She’s told the footman she’s here to meet a less fortunate friend’s husband because the friend is ill and she has no other way to contact her, but she doesn’t feel comfortable here so she made the footman come along. She’ll dismiss him when the man arrives. All guesswork, of course.” Tellen twisted to look over at the blatantly out-of-place pair again. The lady was determinedly not raising a brow to any of the ignoble conversation or acts going on around her, while the footman stood restlessly at attention, making it clear that he noticed, and that he disapproved.

[pilgrimofmanynames]

Noble looked pleased, although why intentionally remained a mystery. Her motives here were a little on the other side of relevant. The fact remained, however, that she was swishing her wine, half-trying not to smile back at Celobra.

”Oh, nefarious, you make me sound so heartless. It is my expansive heart that makes me so determined to right the nobility’s wrongs, I assure you.” An expansive heart that fueled a cunning mind. Celobra's favorite sort of person. She nodded attentively, purely because she saw no need to reply.

”I see a difference, though. Pettiness is me wanting revenge for something done only to me—wanting to get a man back for sneering at me, for instance. Caring would be if I was hurt because of it rather than merely offended. Does that make any sense? It’s not a very good explanation.” Celobra thought about that, especially in context.

"I thought you said it was your 'expansive heart', and not revenge. That sounds a great deal as if you do care. Or am I misinterpreting?" Having pointed out this flaw, Celobra noticed Noble's frown. It was one she knew quite, quite well. It was how somebody looked when they weren't able to do something they knew they could. The explanation, perhaps? It fit, at least. Strange; Celobra would have expected that Noble wouldn't let herself get tipsy. It seemed Noble had thought of the same possible cause, as she was now studying her wine with a look of imagining.


”My guess," Noble said, throwing Celora off balance for a moment before she remembered the problem of the footman, "is that she’s meeting someone she already knows and is comfortable with, but the man made her come here to meet him just to see if she genuinely wanted to entangle her ‘interests’ with his. She’s told the footman she’s here to meet a less fortunate friend’s husband because the friend is ill and she has no other way to contact her, but she doesn’t feel comfortable here so she made the footman come along. She’ll dismiss him when the man arrives. All guesswork, of course.”

Celobra was impressed. Lots of details, all of which could fit quite nicely. She picked a largish piece of bread from her slightly diminished chunk and began to nibble it at intervals. "I could believe that," she said, turning the shred of bread in her fingers and contemplating whether to bite it in half or not. She popped it into her mouth, sticking her tongue out on a whim once it was safely swallowed. "Shall we watch and see if you're right?"

[Lisenet]

Tellen shook her head. "There's no right or wrong way to interpret my natterings. I say contradictory things just to keep myself interested." And it sufficiently confused others, too, not that that was typically her primary concern. Usually she wanted them to understand her--or a cultivated and specific version of herself--so carefully that they thought they could predict her, and then that made them in turn very easy to predict. It was such a delightful game that Tellen never tired of it. Who could tire of pretending to be multiple facets of themselves all at once? One never had the time.

Perhaps that was tiring in and of itself, though. One might argue that trying to be four people instead of one was exhausting, if interesting. And then all that remained to be decided was whether or not the benefits of one way of life outweighed those of the other, or their own downfalls. Tellen had long since decided she liked being duplicitous, or multiplicitous, one might say. It served her needs very well.

"And of course we shall watch!" Tellen replied grandly, breaking off another round of bread. For all that it was the same standard fare that most eating houses carried, some loving baker had mixed more than the usual amount of butter into this one, and it was delicious. "Why else should they be standing out so painfully if not to provide us lesser beings some higher entertainment." Tellen figured she should probably sleep--her language got all flowery and noble-mocking when she was tired like this. Oh well.

[pilgrimofmanynames]

Celobra shook off her discomfort at not teasing out the little puzzle. It was absurdly simple! Boring, almost, if a puzzle could be boring. She would have thought she was tired, but that rarely happened.

Noble shook her head at Celobra's pointed question. "There's no right or wrong way to interpret my natterings. I say contradictory things just to keep myself interested." Well, that would be a challenge while trying to deduce more about her. Although that was probably part of the reason Noble spoke so haphazardly.

When she spoke again, all tired sloppiness was gone, in favor of the high-and-mighty, sarcastic tone Celobra remembered assuming herself earlier in the evening. "And of course we shall watch!"

Celobra smiled again, half-trying, half-pretending to hide it. Then she quizzically eyed the bread that Noble was still dividing up and quickly snatched a medium bite-sized piece. She thought she wasn't moving too quickly to be normal; certainly she was sure she had only been as quick as she needed to be. She devoured her prize with far more vigor than she had her last bit of bread and sat back.

"Why else should they be standing out so painfully if not to provide us lesser beings some higher entertainment," Noble continued. Noble, at least, was definitely tired; Celobra was sure of that. But as she got tired, her voice sounded higher-class, not lower, like most people she met claiming to be fairly middle-class tutors. It was beginning to be probable, rather than simply plausible, that the name "Noble" was closer to the mark than Celobra had thought.

[Lisenet]

The girl sank watchfully into silence, snatching a bit of the last of the bread, and Tellen helped herself to what was left. Bread was delicious even when it wasn't. Sitting back carelessly in her chair, letting its legs squeal a bit on the warped floorboards, she angled so she could see the odd pair out of the corner of her right eye and settled in to wait. "What do you think it will be?" she murmured, as though utterly nonplussed about her companion's descent into utter quietude. "The lover or some other errand on the underside of rightness?" Silence didn't much bother Tellen, it never had. But it was something to note. When one spoke and when one swallowed their words or lost them altogether was even more important than what they did have to say when they did speak. In Tellen's case, the more comfortable and cheerful she was, the more she spoke, the wordier her webs. The more succinct she went, the more uncomfortable, the more tense, the worried. It wasn't a common occurrence, but it happened even to the best of them.

At last, a man wearing what had once been a fitted waistcoat but now was just tired-looking sauntered up to the bar and leaned his elbows against it on the other side of the fancy woman as the frantic footman. The footman looked like he wanted to stand protectively between the two, but by a gloved hand on his arm the woman restrained him. The waistcoated man offered her a small lump wrapped in brown paper, and she slipped him a small stack of silver coins. Tellen nodded, approving. It wasn't fun to always be right about things. "What's your reckoning?" she asked her supper mate. "Drugs or the powdered souls of devils?"